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does anyone know anything about computers i want to increase the speed of my machine so i thought a good start would be the processor will a pentium 4 be a good choice? and where would you suggest i look if buying on line?

QDI and MSI are brands of motherboard, i favour the QDI Kinetiz series over MSI, A-Open is a brand also there boards are a pimp black, you need a case with a window btw cool caseDDR memory is FAST, faster than RIMMS and SDRAM, trust me you need DDRDan (Drunk)

okay so i want to make my computer faster what will i need" dan i cant beleive im asking dan for help tell me what i want and why i want it i now accept its a bit more complicated than slapping a new processor in "

amd chips from 600mhz onwards are socket462, flashing bios on early boards will alow you to fit upto a atjlon xp2200+ (higest commercially available athlon chip)PIII and Celeron Chips are Socket370, these max out at 1.4gig celeron (its a tualiton chip, you need a different board)P4 was socket 4-- or other but they standardised at socket478Nice Motherboard £80takes amd upto 2.2 and beyondi suggest a 1.8 amd athlon xp as that is the best speed to £££ ratio1.7 is like £2 less,1.9 is £20 extrayou want minimum of 256MB DDR333a bi fuck of cpu fan, biggest they do is a good idea,plus a 350w powersuplyDan

Just some corrections from what Dan says...AMD chips came in a socket factor from 700MHz onwards. However, it was possible to get 1GHz Athlons in a slot form.It's spelled Tualatin (a river north of here).DDR *IS NOT* faster than RDRAM. No way, no how. Sorry.The Pentium4 thing is a bit funny. Without getting too technical, in one Hz (instruction cycle), the P4 does less work than an Athlon, so that an Athlon that is a lower speed can be faster. There's some other technical specifics (long pipeline, if anyone reading this cares, amongst other things) that make the P4 sh!t. I wouldn't get one.Agree on the RAM and processor - but shop around to make sure that the 1800+ is the best bang for buck. I'd expect the 1900+ to be by now. Getting the biggest heatsink and fan you can isn't necessarily a good idea - they get very big (and ridiculously expensive - £70 or so). Shop around for the motherboard - I'd check out the usual places, such as Tom's Hardware Guide, Anandtech, or HardOCP.350W power supply is overkill. A 300W is fine. Not that there's anything wrong with overkill, per se.Good links?www.tomshardware.comwww.anandtech.comwww.har docp.comShopping sites:www.dabs.comwww.simply.co.ukwww.overclockers .co.ukare the best sites I've found.

eioni have a socket duron 600you right about the high end slot thouugh )i should have said spend max £20 on a fan, make sure its like 80-mm diameter as ithey are less noisy (bigger blades = more airflow for fewer revsthe clcok speed on RDRAM is faster, but its less common, less expensive and ive found it a hinderance, get DDR333 the price is good and its fastchewingatin, tualitin, whatever, im drunk, eion i love you )i use P4 when im building machines for inside offives etc as they run better, more stable, i have nothing but headaches with athlon machines when used for office based use,amd = gamners dream350w is not overkill, depends what else is in the machine, again for the futile price difference id get the 350W, i sell A LOT of 400w psu to athlon users and a few 450W psu's which is silly thres still a bigger gap between 1900 and 1800 than 1800 and 1700 but if you dont care about 20-50 then get a 2gig, at end of day 100mhz is bugger alloh and eion, i love raceface alosaDan

Thought I'd drop in, another boring night abroad with work, hoping for an update on some shiney new bit of mtb pornography...... and now I know far more than I need to know about my computer - thank you!Interesting though!!!

Hi Dan.Did the Durons come that low? Well, obviously so. I've never seen less than a Duron 700, myself.The clock speed on RDRAM is a lot faster, and the price difference is no longer that great. However, it's kind of a moot point as you can't get RDRAM chipsets for AMD stuff.I'm not sure about the fans. 80mm CPU fans are rare (you normally need a special fan shroud to use 80mm fans on a CPU). I've got a pair of 155mm Pabst AC fans (230cfm each :¬).350W is simply not necessary. I have one because I overclock, have a Geforce3, and the mains power here isn't that great.When building office machines I've used both Athlons and P4s. There's not much to tell them apart in terms of reliability (the ones that were bad were the older Celerons in a dually board). Occasionally people complain about the noise of the Athlons, but they would about the P4s, too.450W is necessary/useful for some applications - for example, overclocking a dual Athlon (especially because a dual Athlon will tend to have a lot of drives in it). There is quite a price difference between 300W and 350W, in my experience - 300W PSUs normally come with a case (mine came with a decent 300W supply), whereas you'll need to pay for a 350W. Mine cost something over £60.

Heyup eion, hows life stateside ?yup, i have that duron running as a smoothwall (very good firewall shinagands) true about RDRAM for AMD, i got badly stung when P4 first arrived, by using RDRAM and the older socket p4's ie pre 478 was it 423 ? 80mm fans aint rare, thermaltake do several including a natty one where it changes colour when the HDD is active) £23 i sell 400w PSU's for, although there is varying levels of qulaity people tend to go for numbers before name,oh and get every console you can lay your hands on, all have advatages and game s you SHOULD play i have one of each, use the x-box the least, if you struggle with the large xbox controler ( i do im only a wee un 5'8 12 stone 12 pianoist type) get a ps2 - xbox cnvertyer and use a ps2 pad)also reliabilty wise DO NOT try and run AMD 900 or above without a 300W psuDan evene drunker"

It's not too bad out here, nice and warm...Yup, I know people who were stung by the early P4 thing - the thing is, it was known when they were released that the socket 423 (IIRC) was temporary, so I don't see why anyone bought them at all.£23 for a 400W PSU? I'll stick with my Enermax 350W.I don't get on with the GameCube, I can't even reach the right thumbstick. Useless. The feel of the whole thing is just... well, not as good as Xbox. Pikmin? Yep, I 'played' that. An RTS with vegetables? What will they think of next? There also seem to be more decent games for the Xbox (I've got 8 *very* decent games). If you like racing games, Project Gotham and Rallisport are top, and Morrowind on the Xbox must be the best console RPG ever (one of the best RPGs ever, too). If you don't get on with the Xbox controller, why not just get a controller s?

warm here as well ( i wish, 16deg and raining),enermax, thats the guys that do the quality PSU's, we do more derick generick than anything else,(enermax IIRC is like 1 in 50 of what we sell) personally i wouldnt put a £23 one in my machine as you pays for what you gets, people want to say they have a 400w psu, they aint bothered on brandgamecube is in growth, they screwed up realesing before summer, as sumer = no games, mario sunshine (on import for ages) is out september so we should see a tun in games,personally i love Yakuza on X-Box, i never said i struggle with the x-box contrller, was jsut suggesting the z-box converter but yes x=box s is an otion ( if i were tolist all the options in my posts id end world hubger and cure cancer LOL! )Dan

x-box is giving into microsofts domination plans, i got the ps2 (and some games for sale ;-)), and i'll wait for the ps3 to be released as its meant for 2003/04 release, in fact they were planning it before the release of the ps2 which is good to see.as for computers i know hee and haw lol.